Ghostbusters film locations
Film locations: New York; Los Angeles
Ghostbusters location: the first ghost: New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue, New York
Although the phenomenally successful supernatural comedy is set in New York, its filming locations are divided between New York and Los Angeles.
The first of many supernatural appearances occurs in the New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue, where the marble lions in the opening shots flank the wide flight of steps along Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets. The haunted stacks, though, were filmed across the continent in the Los Angeles Central Library, Fifth and Hope Streets.
>Ghostbusters location: the Ghostbusters come up with their bright idea: Columbia University, Morningside Heights, New York
After getting the boot from New York‘s Columbia University (which has neither a 'Department of Parapsychology' nor a ‘Weaver Hall’), Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis conceive their ghostbusting plan on the steps of the university’s Low Memorial Library, on the Upper Quadrangle of the campus, north of College Walk, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, West 114th and West 120th Streets, seen more recently in Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2.
The fictitious ‘Manhattan City Bank’, which hands out the loan to set up the Busting business, is the Irving Trust Building, 1 Wall Street.
>Ghostbusters location: The Ghostbusters firehouse: North Moore Street, New York
The dinky little firestation (yes, it is a real one) that serves as HQ is 8 Hook and Ladder at 14 North Moore Street, off West Broadway in the Tribeca area. It's hard now to look at a New York firestation without a tinge of sadness and, indeed, 8 Hook and Ladder did lose one of its team in the 9/11 tragedy.
>Ghostbusters location: The Ghostbusters firehouse interior: Firestation No.23, 225 East Fifth Street, downtown Los Angeles
While the New York location was a working firehouse, a decommissioned building was needed for interiors. This was found on the west coast, in downtown Los Angeles.
It‘s Firestation No. 23, 225 East Fifth Street, seen also in The Mask (as the garage where loser Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) picks up the loan car), in John Carpenter‘s Big Trouble in Little China and Joel Schumacher‘s Flatliners. Built 1910, the station has been closed since the sixties. Be aware that this isn’t the most salubrious area of town.
>Ghostbusters location: The ‘Sedgewick Hotel’: Millennium Biltmore Hotel, South Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles
Also in Los Angeles is the fictitious ‘Sedgewick Hotel”, where the Ghostbusters capture their first apparition in the ballroom. It’s that old favourite, the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, 506 South Grand Avenue, on Pershing Square, downtown Los Angeles, featured in dozens of films, including The Fabulous Baker Boys, Splash!, The Bodyguard, Beverly Hills Cop, Daredevil and Speed.
Back in New York, ‘Spook Central’, Sigourney Weaver’s troubled apartment block, is 55 Central Park West at 65th Street, with a few upper storeys added in by the studio art department.
The chosen location was originally to have been 1 Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, an art-deco apartment tower block with Gothic trimmings and stylised gargoyles, but local residents finally nixed the idea. The building housed the (now gone) One Fifth restaurant, a location for Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Just across from Sigourney Weaver’s apartment, in Central Park, you can see the restaurant where Rick Moranis pounds on the window to escape a ravening hellhound. It’s another much-used location, the Tavern on the Green, Central Park West at 67th Street .
All material Copyright ©2008 The Worldwide Guide To Movie Locations
Designed by Intelligent Designing
Ghostbusters, 1984
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
New York: Flights: JFK Airport
New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets
Tavern on the Green, Central Park West at 67th Street (tel: 212.873.3200)
Los Angeles: Flights: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Millennium Biltmore Hotel, 506 South Grand Avenue at Pershing Square, downtown (tel: 213.624.1011)
Trivia
Not seen in Ghostbusters, the real interior of New York Public Library became the art gallery (the exterior shots were meant to fool you into believing it was the Metropolitan Museum of Art) in John McTiernan's excellent 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo
Columbia University, of course, appears in Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2